One Year Anniversary

Can you believe it?  It's been a year!
For all of you on the Muckinhoupt front... yes Rich is still here, tolerating me daily.  THANK GOD!
For all of you on the Roach front... thank god for your son/ brother that is here bringing me such joy every day.

So what did we do on this monumental day that marks the end of our first year together?  We ate, we talked and we laughed.  We laughed a lot- until tears rolled down our faces and our cheeks hurt.

Rich brought home Pollo Loco and Qdoba nachos.  We had picked up a Lemon Bundtlette from Nuthin Bundt Cake.  So the wedding dinner was replicated perfectly.  As a surprise to Rich I decorated the dining room with the linens from the wedding, as well as the birch tree panels.

On a completely different note.  MAN OUR CONTAINER GARDEN IS GOING WILD!

I am so excited for cucumbers.  It really is something that I can eat all day long, everyday.

The zucchini plant is HUGE.  The blooms look so pretty in the morning.

More to come on the home improvement front- hoping to get some pics taken this weekend to update the web world.  Now that we have returned from the Smith Family Reunion and Katie and Paul's wedding is next weekend, we will finally get on track to get some things knocked out.  I will leave you with one last picture.

Rich is mowing our lovely green lawn, with his 'Shanna Powered' mower.  Yes folks, we had run out of Shanna  power.

Much Love-Shanna

Hand Crushing Update

My poor fingers, after weeding in efforts to save the dying grass, were covered with some lovely busted blisters filled with dirt.  Typing for work the next day, well lets just say it sucked.

So now I am on 'light' weed pulling duty.  Which means I am to focus on succulents, mustard, and anything but the evil geranium looking things that destroyed my fingers.  Good news is, thanks to the efforts of our early Sunday morning weed pulling fest we have gained a little ground in the war against weeds.  The picture below was taken from my office window.  You can see the battle has just begun but eventually we will conquer all those little buggers left of the line.

Much Love- Shanna

What's happenin' at Casa de Roach- Part I

So a bunch has been happening out here in Sparks, NV.  However, I haven't posted up squat for over a month.  So we're gonna see how I do at getting things updated in cyber land.

Part I:  The Lawn....
This is where we were about two months ago, busting our butts- digging out horse pits from hell, digging out stumps, yanking up massive roots, destroying tree saplings, tilling the yard, leveling it out, seeding it and tossing fertilizer dirt over all 3000 sq ft.

Day three post seeding...

Almost two weeks in...

Almost four weeks in... 

 And now...

And I know you are thinking omg-  What the hell happen to their yard?  No worries it is in the middle of a lovely hand crushing transformation to Rich's dream back yard.  Currently it has been mowed a handful of times (in need of mowing now, but today is a watering day so tomorrow will be a mowing day) and is sporting an insane number of weeds.  So what have Rich and I been doing for fun in the cool hours of the day?  Pulling weeds, by the thousands, out of future fabulous yard.  (I was in the yard at 0630 this morning and Rich was out there at 0730.  This was the fourth attack on weeds we have made, the pics don't show it but there has been huge progress.)  Here are some of little buggers for your viewing pleasure.

These little buggers are the most difficult to pull.  Along with them we have dandelions (no problem getting rid of them), little tiny ferns (they are super soft, so not to worried about them), wild mustard (looks worse then it is because it pulls out so easy), weird vine things (which are annoying to pull), every now and then some baby trees (like the ones that we dug out with all the roots, so we snag them asap) and the biggest surprise of all- succulents.

These little buggers, are kind of vine like, squishy rubber leaves that actually have cute little yellow flowers on them.  Not so bad right? Two problems 1) It isn't grass, which is the whole goal here. 2) Bees like little yellow flowers a lot, and Rich and I swell up like Cabbage Patch Kids if we get stung- so not a winning combination.
But I do like them, so one night we transplanted a hundred or so of them up to one of the dead zones by the fence.  Currently they seem to be living.  We have no idea how long they will stay up there though.  (Rich is afraid they will get into the yard by airborne seeds??? Not really sure how that works with succulents but the yard is his domain and he gets to make the final call.)

And the biggest surprise for me in this whole yard growing adventure?  The new grass we have grown has already started to die in random patches.  We believe that when watering we must have missed them for a few days, so now we are on a full fledged watering attack to regain the green ground that we have spent hundreds of hours to cultivate.

So in this picture you can see our not green grass :( and an unusual absence of weeds on it.  Why is that?  Because we pulled them all to make sure they weren't hogging anything that our tender grass needs to survive.
Basically I am hopeful for a spectacular yard in summer number three :)

Much love- Shanna